Germany’s Lingering Hegelianism

“And so things continue as before, because in a post-historical era, sprinkled with German-Hegelian state worship and a view of oneself as the summit of civilizational development, there is no need to move from the spot one has occupied.”

for S.N.S.

Having lived in Germany for many years on and off from 2004 to 2012, I have been privy to that country’s particular foibles. My love for German literature, music, and philosophy, the latter of which is ultimately what drove me to that country, was very much my own: Whereas I had been raised to admire the British Empire, and whereas it was a matter of course that I should speak French like all of my family’s leading matriarchs, my love for German culture I had developed alone and it therefore, in a sense, burned even stronger. And so it is with far more sadness than Schadenfreude that I write about Germany’s cultural collapse and self-inflicted Islamization.

My first inkling of the lingering German Hegelianism was during my initial few months in Germany in 2004, which I spent mostly in Berlin. In my search for the best German university I had briefly visited Heidelberg, which was indeed to become my beloved Alma Mater, and had been impressed by the mosaics of Greek quotations on the wall in the main humanities library (taken from the library of Alexandria and from 2 Corinthians 3:6). When I soon thereafter walked into the Humboldt University in Berlin, the large quotation on the wall that greeted me was from Karl Marx (the famous line from the Theses on Feuerbach that philosophers should not just interpret but change the world), and I thought to myself: “Heidelberg it is.” In fairness, the latter quote had been put there during the communist East German era, but it was still a sign of a self-satisfied Hegelian spirit that has never left Germany and that, just as it contributed to that country’s rise, is now just as surely contributing to its fall.

The recent election in Germany, and the current attempts by Friedrich Merz to form a new government there, are a microcosm of this spirit. Some people of a more conservative bent had hoped for a solid Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) victory. I shared their hope but said in a few interviews leading up to the election that I did not think the German people were ready for such a drastic change, and that proved to be correct. I had two reasons for thinking this.